Reality Insurgents

Is it really September?

I've been distracted by a) school holidays - two children needing entertaininment and not getting it, and b) another very exciting music project called …of Diamonds. But this isn't about that, this is about the novel.

I am now writing two chapters simultaneously; the first and the last. These two chunks of writing place the rest of the novel into a context which I wonder whether will be picked up by readers. In my minds, they explicitly set out one of the most important themes, namely that the human mind is prone to confusion, that reality is a slippery concept, and that death stalks us like a serial killer with a fuck-off big gun.

Today I read this http://steelweaver.tumblr.com/post/8175553314/reality-as-failed-state-tl-dr-version-i-like-doing which I found very stimulating. He employs a metaphor of a failed state for reality, which is really interesting, and notes how our grasp on reality has been fractured by the distinction we have in our own minds between our everyday reality and the 'magic fantasy world' as supplied by the 'media realm'. The problem we have in dealing with global warming (the apparent theme of my current novel and his interest in writing about reality) is that people 'no longer inhabit a single reality', and the arguments made in favour of taking action over global warming are rejected the global warming deniers because they come from a different reality and therefore make no sense to them. He also differentiates between the 'sclerotic bureaucracy of institutionalised reality' and the dynamic media memes spreading over on the deniers' side. He calls the deniers, the Tea Partiers et al, 'reality insurgents', which neatly brings in the apparently loopy insurgencies of terror cells acting against America and pals.

All of which uncannily tackles the same sorts of ideas Jefferson Greenspan Saves The World? is trying to deal with.